Deepwater Arbitrator Not Biased

The English Court of Appeal ruled that an arbitrator chairing an insurance case arising from the Deepwater Horizon oil rig explosion in the Gulf of Mexico ought to have disclosed involvement in overlapping cases, but said failure to do so did not make him biased. In a dispute following the Deepwater Horizon incident which caused extensive environmental damage along the Gulf Coast, numerous claims were made against BP, as well as Transocean and Halliburton, both of which had liability insurance from Chubb. After settling with claimants, both companies made claims under their insurance policies which Chubb rejected on the basis that the settlements were unreasonable. Halliburton commenced arbitration proceedings against Chubb and each party appointed an arbitrator. The parties could not agree on the identity of the third arbitrator who was then court-appointed to chair the tribunal. The chair disclosed that he was already in two unrelated insurance cases to which Chubb was party. Transocean later also commenced arbitration against Chubb. Chubb named the chair arbitrator in the Halliburton case as its party-appointed arbitrator. Prior to accepting this appointment, it was disclosed to Transocean that the same arbitrator was appointed chair in the Halliburton case and in the other Chubb arbitrations which had been disclosed to Halliburton. However, the arbitrator failed to disclose to Halliburton his proposed appointment in the Transocean dispute. Halliburton later tried to remove the arbitrator on the grounds of doubts as to impartiality, but a trial court found there was no appearance of bias against Halliburton which then appealed. While the appeals court accepted Halliburton’s concerns of unfairness where an arbitrator accepts appointments in overlapping cases with only one common party, the court found arbitrators, like judges, are to be assumed trustworthy and to understand that they should approach every case with an open mind. They found the mere fact of an overlap does not give rise to justifiable doubts of impartiality. While finding best practice calls for an arbitrator to disclose circumstances that would lead an observer to see a real possibility of bias, such that disclosure should have been made, they nevertheless rejected the appeal. See more here-- https://bit.ly/2I7QA3u and https://bit.ly/2I2ljir